Bones of the Earth

“Now that,” Molly Gerhard said, “is one ugly critter.”

“Are you nuts? It’s gorgeous.”

The glyptodon slowly approached the cabbages and examined them critically. Then it crunched first one and then the other in its beaked mouth, tossing its head as it ate. After which, it waddled away again. They were grouchy creatures, glyptodons were. They reminded her a lot of ankylosaurs.

And a little of Griffin.

The water was ready then, so she poured two cups and carried them to the kitchen table. “So,” she said. “How are the talks?”

Molly Gerhard looked discouraged. “They talk. But they won’t negotiate.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“How so?” Molly Gerhard leaned forward. “What have you figured out?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t have learned if you’d been paying attention.”

“What? What? Tell me.”

Salley sipped her tea, and said nothing.

Molly Gerhard changed tactics. “Listen to me. We’re ru

“I loathe bureaucratic jargon. Give it to me in English.”

“We’ve been here six days. Two more, and the Old Man finds us and shuts us down. Come with me to Terminal City. Help us find an answer.”

“There’s nothing to be learned there.”

“And there is out here?”

“Yes,” Salley said. “Have you taken a close look at the waterbushes?”

“Those things that clog the river? No.”

“I have. They’re an entirely new plant form. I think they’re derived from kelp, believe it or not. Forget about the glyptodons. Waterbushes are much more important.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Let me put it this way. The biggest difference between the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic is not the absence of dinosaurs, but the presence of grass. Grass changed everything. It has amazing powers of recovery, which made large-scale grazing possible for the first time. Which in turn made animals like bisons and water buffalos possible. And therefore made predators like lions and tigers possible. Theoretically, birds could have evolved to fill the niches their bigger cousins vacated. How come mammals managed to make an end run around birds? Grass! It changed the rules. It made it impossible for the dinosaurs to come back.”

“Oh-kaay. I think I’m following this. So what’s the application to our present situation?”

“The waterbushes are something new. They change the rules. I want to see what they’ve made of the local ecosystem.”

“It’s a pretty dull ecosystem, I gather,” Molly Gerhard said. “Lots of drab little birds. A few lizards, and I think I saw some crawdads. I don’t see why you’d care, when you’ve got all these terrific mammals to look at. You’ve never seen them before, right? I’d think you’d be excited.”

“I was, at first. But there’s no context. It’s like going to the fucking zoo. You see an elephant, some kangaroos, and a pond full of penguins and try to figure out what kind of ecosystem produced them. You know nothing about their behavior. You know nothing about what they’re like in the wild. I want to see the Telezoic. I want to muck about in a functioning wilderness.”

She did not tell Molly, but it was immediately obvious to her that this could not possibly be the Unchanging’s home time. The environment was simply not damaged enough to be home to a technologically advanced civilization. Even if they’d reached a stage where they could restore the damaged biota, resurrect extinct plants and animals, recreate the delicate webs of interdependence, there was no way they could undo the physical damage—the mountains leveled, the minerals redistributed, pit mines dug deep into the earth.

There was no way they would.

“Well,” Molly Gerhard said, “if you want to go look, why don’t you?”

Salley lifted her chin, to make her torc more prominent.

With a stricken expression, Molly reached out to touch Salley’s arm. “Oh, Salley. You don’t really think…”

“Yes. I do.”

The crate had been humiliating enough.

But when she’d emerged from it into Terminal City, Salley wasn’t expecting to be put on a leash. The Unchanging, however, were astonishingly literal-minded. They had fit the torc around Salley’s neck, and given Griffin the controller. He’d slipped it into his pocket. “I promise you,” he’d said, as soon as the Unchanging were out of earshot, “I will never use it.”

She stuck out her hand. “Fork it over, and I’ll make damned sure you won’t.”

Griffin looked pained. “I can’t do that. They’d know.”

“You like this!” Salley spat. “You’re enjoying it.”

“Of course I’m not.”

Arguing, they’d stepped through a transport gate and into the village.

They’d patched things up that night, and slept together, and even made love. But it still rankled. So, after a day’s unhappy thought, she’d gone walkabout.

The mammals were delightful. She had to admit that. What she had originally thought a game preserve, but eventually concluded must be a quarantine area or holding pens for transshipment, was stocked with marvels. The kyptocerases alone—primitive, deerlike ungulates with two horns over their eyes and another pair on their noses—were well worth price of admission. She broke out laughing every time she saw one. They might have been invented by Dr. Seuss.

But whenever she’d started to wander away from the river, something had drawn her back. She’d get bored, or tired, or distracted. A pattern began to emerge. So she started observing the animals themselves, to see how their torcs kept them in their designated areas.

And found that whenever they reached the limits of their range, they’d grow bored, or tired, or distracted, and turn back. Once or twice, she noticed them grow randy and amble off in search of a mate. Never outward. Always inward.

“Stop beating up on yourself, Salley,” Molly Gerhard said. “Word of honor, Griffin isn’t using the controller. Look. I don’t even particularly like the man. But I swear to you, he wouldn’t do that.”

Salley was a romantic. It almost went without saying. Any person who squandered all her life and intellect on an underpaid career laboriously grinding fossils out of rocks just because these stones had once been the bones of an animal that millions of years ago had kicked Mesozoic butt was of necessity a romantic. It went with the territory. It was why so many paleontologists wore fu

She wanted to believe Molly Gerhard.

But she wasn’t about to turn off her brain to do so.

So, after she’d gotten rid of the woman, Salley went back to her creek and as far up it as she could before feeling so tired and weary that she simply couldn’t go one step further. It was a bright little glen with ferns around the edges, and a clear mossy space under the trees she’d almost reached twice before, but never set foot upon.

She took Jimmy’s Mont Blanc out of her pocket.

Then she threw it gently ahead of her, onto a soft patch of moss. It glinted, bright and golden, in the sunlight.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to walk ahead and pick it up. Yet she did not. Go get it, she thought. Jimmy will be pissed if you lose it. It’s important to him. Walk over and pick it up.

But she didn’t. She simply didn’t want to. No matter how important the pen was, she wasn’t about to go after it.

Which was how she knew for sure that Griffin really was controlling her.